ABSTRACT This article argues that tackling the greatest political challenges will require change to the political system itself, particularly to institutions that too often leave people feeling that their vote and voice do not matter. It makes the case for proportional representation (PR) as crucial step towards building a politics that is more open, fair, and representative of voters' interests, rather than one that rewards tactical calculation over genuine public support. Under PR, voters would matter everywhere, smaller parties could become genuine collaborators, and politicians would be encouraged to build broader coalitions and speak to more people. The article argues that this could help create a more plural, accountable, and stable political culture, while reducing the incentives for division and exclusion.
ABSTRACT Drawing on Plato's warning that regimes decay when institutions fail to deliver, Josh MacAlister MP contends that state dysfunction ‐ visible in stalled infrastructure projects, an inability to build nuclear power at the pace of previous generations, and an overly risk‐averse children's social care system ‐ is corroding public trust and creating space for demagogic politics. Labour's founding commitment to collective action is undermined by bureaucratic sclerosis, dispersed accountability, and excessive veto points across government. The article calls for radical structural reform, including creating “sandboxes” that consolidate decision‐making authority across agencies to unblock stuck projects, empowering frontline teams to operate outside conventional bureaucratic constraints.
ABSTRACT Many problems in public policy and delivery which are otherwise difficult to understand, make much more sense when viewed as strategies for the management of legal risk. Civil servants, infrastructure developers and other parties who are subject to the risk of legal review often act as if there was a “judge over their shoulder”, taking pre‐emptive action to mitigate the risk despite the fact that doing so increases the cost and delay to important projects. It might be possible to improve outcomes significantly by moving more contentious issues out of the scope of litigation and improving consultation.
ABSTRACT Eleven years after David Cameron promised ‘stability and strong government’; nine years after Theresa May pledged ‘strong and stable leadership’; and two years after Keir Starmer vowed to ‘stop the chaos’, the UK has its seventh prime minister in a decade. Most analyses emphasise either the failings of individual leaders, the challenges confronting modern governments or the erosion of state‐capacity and party loyalties. Yet such accounts are quite present‐centred: they rarely ask whether the challenges facing government today are worse than in previous eras, nor do they pay much attention to earlier periods of churn. This article explores periods of volatility across two centuries, identifying a series of common pressures: the detonation of an explosive political question; periods of financial strain and public debt; disruptive forms of media; and party succession‐crises. It notes that such periods can also be creative, and warns against attempts to rebuild an old political settlement.
ABSTRACT This piece examines three elements of the British far right today: Restore Britain, Reform UK and far‐right street movements. It examines how each element measures success, arguing that although electoral gains look difficult for Restore and Reform is no longer on track to win a majority at the next election, the far right are achieving a wider goal of ‘metapolitics’. Ethnonationalism—the idea that Britishness is defined by white ancestry, and not by values or citizenship—remains a live threat to social cohesion and democracy in the UK.
ABSTRACT To be resilient against the challenges we face today, and will face in the future, government must permanently invest in communities and build new institutions to support civic life. Josh Westerling and Yasmin Ibison identify current and future challenges to community life, reflect on past and present policy shortfalls, and set a clear and distinct path forward.
ABSTRACT The social democratic ideological tradition ‐ including the liberalism within it ‐ should be described more accurately and defended. Liberalism within social democracy is the liberalism of public things and of cooperation, and of pride in welcoming places, based on mutual respect and understanding; it is the liberalism which builds societies of many possibilities, providing great breadth of education, culture and joy; and it is the liberalism that values the opportunities and responsibilities of international partnerships, whether of trade or security. The Starmer government, on occasion, fell into an illiberal trap, particularly on migration policy. A reassertion of liberal values would help the centre‐left make better choices, both morally and economically. A defence of liberalism is a necessary effort, and that defence is best done by thinking through how the liberal thread that runs through social democracy helps us pull together a more hopeful, optimistic politics.
ABSTRACT Local infrastrucutre is a lens through which citizens materially experience the actions of the state. Drawing on the concept of 'infrastructural citizenship', this paper explores how shared spaces can shift from sources of alienation to catalysts for trust. To anchor the renewal of everyday life in local infrastructure, we set out a four‐pillar framework: universal basic infrastructure, lived spatial context, multi‐scalar governance, and long‐term stewardship. Together, these pillars offer citizens daily, tangible evidence of state investment in their collective future.
The abundance agenda offers an important provocation to progressives, asking them to think big about the possibilities for growth and economic renewal. Developed in the context of the United States, abundance economics is also attracting some attention in UK policy circles, given the government's top‐line commitment to growth, and the threat posed by the scarcity politics of the populist right. But while the abundance critique of the status quo is a powerful one, its policy prescriptions may not translate straightforwardly to the UK. Enacting economic reforms in the name of abundance may also rely on a mode of emergency politics that trades off democratic accountability for efficiency. The question for Labour is not only whether they believe that abundance is the right economic strategy, but how they can turn it into a viable political programme that takes public consent seriously, based on a narrative that invites the public to support the trade‐offs it involves.
This article critiques the book Abundance, arguing that the UK's growth crisis stems from economic scarcity and difficult trade‐offs, not merely a “scarcity mindset”.
Advocates of the ‘abundance’ agenda dream of a bright future, but in the UK its possibility relies on economic sacrifices in the present. The consequent politics are wicked and demand ideologically informed choices about scarce resources.
The emergence of a progressive politics of abundance has reframed debates about growth, capacity and the role of the state, challenging policy frameworks that manage scarcity rather than enabling expansion. In the UK energy system, this paper argues, scarcity is not the result of insufficient resources or weak demand, but of a system design that has produced high prices, slow delivery and suppressed consumption. Despite significant expansion in renewable generation capacity, Britain remains trapped in a high-cost equilibrium characterised by grid constraints, delayed connections, fragmented regulation and underinvestment in enabling infrastructure. The paper contends that energy abundance in the renewables era must be redefined: not as installed capacity alone, but as the ability to deliver affordable, reliable and clean power at scale, when and where it is needed. It argues that achieving this requires a shift from marginal, project-by-project optimisation towards deliberate system design, centred on electrification, proactive infrastructure build-out and institutional reform. Energy abundance, the paper concludes, is not a by-product of decarbonisation but its precondition—and a necessary foundation for economic renewal, industrial competitiveness and a durable political settlement around net zero in the UK.
The Abundance agenda has drawn attention to the problems of regulatory systems prioritizing processes over outcomes and potentially failing to support the development of essential infrastructure, including new housing. Whilst this problem has been seen in the UK, with some development projects struggling to navigate the politics of local planning, this commentary argues that the major impediments to building the housing that the UK actually needs are, firstly, an over-reliance on speculative building, and a corresponding lack of diversity in the UK's housing production model, and secondly, an under-resourcing of public planning. The UK urgently needs a more mixed ecosystem of housing delivery, and greater support for non-profit public and social providers who can bridge the gap between market demand and broader housing need.
ABSTRACT The UK's current political stagnation stems from a lack of growth, which has forced the government into a zero‐sum "politics of austerity" and a lost tax revenue of £150 billion annually compared to US growth rates. To escape this, progressives must embrace an "abundance agenda" that prioritizes building homes, cheap energy, and modern infrastructure. This requires shifting the narrative from abstract GDP figures to tangible public benefits while aggressively distinguishing genuine innovation from corporate rent‐seeking. Furthermore, the government should adopt a "flexicurity" model to protect workers during the AI‐led industrial revolution, ensuring that technological disruption leads to shared prosperity rather than obsolescence. Ultimately, abundance is the only viable "Third Way" to fund radical state action and restore public faith in liberal democracy.
